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The main problem with the later shows is they were all Synthehol drinkers. I mean how manly can you be when you drink that shit?

Here is a great article on it from Modern Drunkard.

Make no mistake—Captain Kirk and his crew were cowboys and they treated the universe like the Wild West. There was always a lot of solemn talk about the Prime Directive and not interfering with native cultures, but that went right out the window the moment Kirk laid eyes on the first attractive female of whatever species they came across. Sure, they solved a lot of problems, but half the time they were solving problems they created. The crew of the original Enterprise wasn’t trying to unite the universe, they weren’t trying to right the universe’s many and sundry wrongs—they were looking for kicks.

And alcohol played an essential role in that quest. It was a beautiful situation—you not only got to drink, you got to drink ales, wines and liquors the human race couldn’t even imagine. And they always seemed stronger than our silly earthling libations, every alien race bragged their booze would floor a human if he so much as looked in the bottle’s direction. Klingon Blood Wine, Romulan Ale, Saurian Brandy—they came on harder than a photon torpedo barrage and when you woke up, if you woke up, you’d be nursing a nebula-sized hangover the fastest warp drive in the universe couldn’t outrun. Humans were considered the lightweights of the universe, a bunch of Bartle-and-James swilling high school punks among whiskey-chugging dilithium-crystal miners.

Then Kirk and his boys came along. Kirk could not only hold his own with the extraterrestrial hooch, he was backed up by a hard-pounding crew. Spock wasn’t much help (Vulcans are the designated drivers of the Universe), but Dr. Leonard "Bones" McCoy thought so little of the potent alien liquors he administered them as cough syrup. And he had skills too, when he wasn’t wiping out planetary epidemics and pronouncing any number of security crewmen dead, he was concocting cocktails that that would become infamous from one end of the galaxy to the other. And Scotty, don’t get me started on that beautiful son of a bitch. Born and bred to it like a bird dog, this Aberdeen son could drink a transporter room full of aliens under the table then whistle Tura-lura-lura all the way back to his private stash of scotch. These three walk in a Klingon pub and half an hour later Klingon heads are hitting tables like Bacchus’s own drum roll.

And why shouldn’t they have been boozy philanderers? Their creator, Gene Rodenberry certainly was. So was the inventor of the Warp Drive, Zefram Cochrane. Zeph refused to pilot a starship sober, under any circumstances, and was even able to coerce that super-PC empath Counselor Troi into getting hammered on shots of tequila.

It was because of the hard (yet somehow enjoyable) work of the original crew that earthlings soon enjoyed a universal reputation as being the hardest drinking wild-asses who ever rode a rocket into space. Then everything went to hell.

The Synthehol BoondoggleSynthehol. It sounds like aftershave without the kick, which is sadly close to the truth. After Kirk finished ripping up (and repopulating) the universe, a bunch of Earl Grey-sipping sissies followed in his wake. Star Trek: The Next Generation absorbed the political correctness of its era and came up with sinister synthehol. Instead of chugging their hooch from bottles liberated from burning Romulan Birds of Prey, on-board replicators create the libations swilled on the latter-day Federation starships. An obvious bow to MADD, these artificial liquors are supposed to taste and smell exactly like alcohol but mete out no hangovers and here’s the kicker—its effects can be easily disregarded. In other words, the current writers are attempting to take advantage of the inherent drama of the ship’s lounge and its booze while being able to say to the network censors, “It doesn’t really get them drunk.”

Problem is, people (and aliens) keep getting loaded on the stuff. Real alcohol-based hooch is available for the right price -- even that tea-sipping, starship-surrendering ponce Picard has the bartender keep a bottle of real-deal Aldeberan Whiskey behind the bar for his own private use. Make no mistake though, just because his family owns a vineyard on Earth and he stashed some good stuff doesn’t mean he’s a latter-day Kirk. Examine this exchange with the young Wesley Crusher after the lad had tucked into a little hooch.

Wesley: So you mean I'm drunk! I feel strange, but also good.Picard: (huffily putting aside his knitting) Because you have lost the capacity for self-judgment. Alcohol does this, Wesley!

Kirk would have challenged the upstart whelp to a Romulan Ale drinking contest, then hooked him up with an Orion slave girl.

The only latter-day crew member who might be cool enough to hang with Kirk’s crew is Worf, who keeps getting the Klingon slogan, “It’s a good day to die” mixed up with “It’s a good day to drink.” He also likes dishing out the threats when Picard and his gang of lightweights invite him to have spritzers with them. “You would be so drunk you would not be able to stand,” he tells Riker after he asks for a taste of Klingon hooch. And he expresses the universal drunkard sentiment to Picard: “Don’t get between me and my blood wine!” An alien after my own heart.

The hardest drinking human is probably Chief O’Brien down in Engineering. There’s something about the engineering room that seems to either attract drunks or drive men to drink. Maybe it’s that weird low hum that’s always coming off the dilithium crystals, or the lingering, hard-to-shake realization that if a single molecule of matter gets into the antimatter chamber the whole shebang explodes into a black hole the size of Pluto. Wouldn’t you be getting hammered any chance you got?

As far as synthehol tasting exactly like alcohol—well, it didn’t pass the Scotty test. He tasted the swill during an appearance on the new Star Trek and was ready to start cracking some heads, old-Trek style, when Data hastily came up with a dusty bottle of Aldeberan Whiskey (probably Picard’s bottle). From that point on that smarmy android was aces in my Captain’s Log.

But enough of the new, let’s get back to the old, where the Saurian Brandy flowed like Klingon blood wine and Yeomen wore miniskirts so short they’d make a Ferengi blush.

The Enemy WithinDue to a transporter malfunction, Kirk is split into two separate captains—one wildass, one mild mannered. Which, coincidentally, is the exact same excuse I use after my fifth shot of tequila.

The wildass Kirk wastes no time getting the party started, storming into sick bay and demanding a bottle of Saurian Brandy, which McCoy apparently keeps around for medicinal purposes. When McCoy demurs, Kirk goes last-call crazy: "I said give me the brandy!" he snarls, then chokes the doctor a little bit to get his point across. McCoy, rethinking his previous selfishness, coughs it up. Kirk snatches it away and starts hitting the hooch the moment he steps into the hallway, managing to almost finish it off before he decides to pay a visit to the quarters of Yeoman Rand, the leggy blonde who’d been giving him the eye. It doesn’t go so well from there and Kirk gets a nasty facial scratch for his troubles. Hey, all he wanted to do was party.

The Tholian WebThe crew is going crazy from space waves and Dr. McCoy instructs everyone to slam a diluted shot of Klingon nerve poison to deaden certain nerve impulses. Scott refuses until McCoy tells him he used alcohol as the diluting agent and that, after drinking it, a man could be hit with phaser stun without feeling a thing. "Any good scotch will do that,” Scottie says and drinks it down.

By Any Other NameWhen a gang of super beings who’ve taken human form hijack the Enterprise, Kirk decides to undo them by appealing to their new-found human sensations. Kirk goes for the seduction (natch), McCoy employs his powers of irritation and Scotty brings into play his own special strength—he tries to drink one of them under the table.

"Lad, you're gonna need something to wash that down with,” Scotty says, strolling over to where the alien Tomar eats. “Have you ever tried any Saurian brandy?" Tomar shakes his head no and they repair to Scotty’s quarters for an interspecies drink-off. They drink every bottle of brandy Scotty has on hand, which is saying something because Scotty was apparently stocked up for a very long drought. Tomar is hanging in there like an Irish uncle and Scotty decides it’s time to go for the big guns, dragging out his treasured bottle of Ganymede Scotch. Talk about self-sacrifice. Tomar inquires, "What is it?" All Scotty can squeeze out is, “Well, it's . . . um . . . it's green." (Data would repeat the exact same line when he produced the bottle in the aforementioned encounter with Scotty.)

They tuck into the scotch and just before they polish it off Tomar takes a dive. Scotty, his job done, takes a little nap himself seconds later. Humans: 1 Super Aliens: 0.

Requiem for MethuselahDetained by yet another super-powered alien, Kirk and his away team are forced to hang around and drink one hundred-year-old Saurian Brandy. No one is more surprised than Kirk and Bones when Spock opts to join them in a drink. So perhaps Spock isn’t a teetotaler at all, merely a snob.

Soon a much looser Spock is playing the piano and making rare confessions: “I am close to experiencing an unaccustomed emotion." "What emotion is that?" McCoy wants to know. "Envy," Spock replies. Drinking someone else’s hundred-year-old Saurian brandy tends to induce that emotion. Later Spock has to wipe Kirk’s brain so he forgets the chick he gets hooked on. Spock uses a mind probe, not the brandy.

“Then I need a drink,” McCoy answers, then, while “having a drop,” offers some to the Vulcan, who refuses, snidely firing back: "My father's race was spared the dubious benefits of alcohol." McCoy comes right back at him with: "Oh. Now I know why they were conquered." Game, set and match, baby.

The Ultimate ComputerAfter Kirk gets replaced by a new super-computer (they call Kirk Captain Dunsel, for crissakes), the good Doctor McCoy soothes Kirk’s bruised ego with his own special concoction: Finagle’s Folly, a cocktail which he brags is famous from “here to Orion.” Now that’s a doctor I’d trust my life with.

And that doesn't even include the one where they have to reenact the OK corral and the lot of them spend most of the show sitting around drinking bourbon after Scotty tries to order a half gallon of scotch.

I used to rank Voyager last, too, for many of the same reason. But after I stopped hoping it would turn into the show I thought it should be, and started watching the show that it actually was, I changed my opinion.

As for the Year of Hell reset...It's not like one of the best-rated TNG episodes...All Good Things...isn't one giant reset button, either. For all that, All Good Things still ranks as among my favorite 1 hour and 2 minutes of TV goodness. Time-Trevel-resetting is a Trek Staple. First Contact used it, to great effect.

I'm willing to give the new version an honest shot. I don't have many expectations for it, so if it doesn't suck, I'll be on board for the ride...after it comes out on DVD.

kingbobb wrote:As for the Year of Hell reset...It's not like one of the best-rated TNG episodes...All Good Things...isn't one giant reset button, either. For all that, All Good Things still ranks as among my favorite 1 hour and 2 minutes of TV goodness.

All Good Things gets a pass because it's a series finale/send-off. Year of Hell occurred after what, 2 seasons? And it would have been one hell of a status quo shift.

The other thing about Voyager that is rather telling is that other episode where they encounter another Federation crew sent by the Caretaker to the Delta Quadrant, but they went through hell and abandoned their Federation principles. After seeing them, I wanted to see more of them over Janeway, Kim, Torres, Paris, etc.

kingbobb wrote:but it's not really the best Trek series. I think that goes to Voyager. I watched the first 2 seasons of Voyager before losing track of it, but I re-watched the entire series a little over a year ago when recording them off of Spike TV. For its entire run, Voyager manages to out Trek TOS in terms of capturing the ideas and ideals that Roddenberry attempted to capture in his creation. It also managed to successfully portray female captain who was more than just a version of Kirk with boobs.

I wish I could express how much I disagree with you, but my head can only explode so much. This is the kinda statement that gets your name put on the terrorist watch list. It's the kind of statement that increases the universal level of entropy. It's the kind of premise that makes baby jesus cry.

There really only were two good things about Voyager. Jeri Ryan's right boob, and her left boob while the Doctor was standing somehwere slightly off-screen. Until her boobs were assimilated by the Collective, the only thing worthwhile on Voyager was the Doctor. And that's because out of all the mouth-breathers on that ship, he's the most believably human character.

1) First of all, we've got a crew composed of Starfleet officers and terrorists. Now, these aren't just any run-of-the-mill terrorists; they're ex-Starfleet officers who turned on their government, committing treason.

You know what happened to treasonous bastiches in TOS era? They'd send Captain Kirk to whup their space-nazi, communist asses. They even had to start creating parallel earths just so Kirk could continue whupping their asses.

The Maquis, being much more morally advanced citizens of the future than Kirk's band of primitive barbarians, simply weren't enlightened enough to realize they could grab up their industrial replicators and farm on another planet. No, instead, they ignored Federation law and decided that some acres of land were more important than the ideals of galactic cooperation and peace.

They decided that their real estate was worth more than a peace treaty with a former enemy.

And once these insurgent bastiches got on board Voyager, they spent half the actual voyage running down their captain or generally complaining about all the time taken to explore cosmic anomalies. All because they wanna get back to the Alpha Quadrant, so they can continue killing Cardassians and attacking Federation supply routes and what-not.

2) Second of all, we've got a crew and a Captain who care even less about the dangers of sharing dangerous Starfleet tech than Kirk does. The episode that Spike was rocking yesterday had Janeway give dangerous technology to a dangerous adversary race that has proven repeatedly how naughty it is. On first blush, the holographic technology they shared with these Predator rip-offs might seem innocuous. Until you remember that, with the safeties switched off, holograms can be deadly.

This is made even worse somehow by the fact that Voyager just spent an entire two-part episode showing exactly how dangerous this tech is. And they just give it to a race that has proven over and over again how little they respect life.

And that is made even worse by the fact that, when Voyager next encounters the Hirogen, they've abused this technology even more than they did when they took over Voyager, and are now using it to create sentient holographic prey.

That in and of itself is bad because, holograms or no, these are sentient beings. But it's made worse because it backfires in Voyagers face since these are pissed off sentient beings.

And we know why Janeway did this: she knows the Hirogen way of life is self-destructive and she gave her word to the Hirogen commander. Good to see her priorities are in order, I guess.

Of course, like Captain, like crew. Tuvok attempts to steal some tech from an alien culture with their own Prime Directive that will help Voyager maybe shave a few years off their trip. I mean, that's cool and the gang when you're involved in a cold war with some romulan bastiches who keep building goddamn cloaking devices. But not so much when you've entered into peaceful diplomatic relations with an entirely new culture under first contact protocols. let's just jack these fools for their space-doohickies.

Again, we know why Tuvok does this: because they wanna fuckin' get home before his wife starts entering logical discourse with the milkman. But since we're talking ideals and values here, that don't make it right.

3) Utter lack of respect for the frickin' hologram. Like, these bastiches have to be slowly convinced over the entire course of the show that the Doctor has feelings and is sentient enough to not just cut him off in the middle of a sentence. He's lucky he hooked up with that mobile emitter or else they'd still probably be calling him "It" and turning the lights off on him when they walk out of Sickbay.

Of course, I ain't saying this is necessarily the fault of the characters. Janeway's not a bad character. Chakotay's not a bad character.

It's the writing. They had nothing but bland ideas for the writing, and then had the temerity to blame it on Roddenberry's rules for the 24th century man. Picard was a 24th century man, and he still managed to bed at least three or four bettys over the course of his cruise. He's pontificating and spouting Shakespeare on the one hand, and on the other, he's bedding down with vash, and some JAG hoo-er and one of his own officer honeys. How like a mutha-fuckin' god.

Meanwhile, harry Kim can't even manage to throw down with Seven's sexy ass even when she's throwing it in his face.

But on a more serious tip, this blandness translated into an utterly wasted premise: lack of conflict. Remember how I mentioned the treasonous bastiches in the Maquis before? it's like, after the first season, they just squashed their conflict. Paris and Chakotay are fine. Tuvok and Chakotay are fine. The potential for interpersonal drama here was immense. These are two guys who have crossed Chakotay. Paris was an untrustworthy renegade before he got sent to the hoosgow; Tuvok was an undercover Op who infiltrated Chakotay's Maquis cell. But at the most, we get little more than lip service given to these potentially juicy conflicts.

So instead of seeing them grow into a united crew, we're simply told they already have done that.

Bland writing also gave us hollow retreads of TNG episodes and concepts. it wasn't even the third or fourth episode of Voyager before we got Generic Space Anomaly: A as the major plotline of the episode. Oh hey, that odd shaped blob on the viewscreen stuck in the event horizon of that space-booty? That's us! We're seeing ourselves in a quantum disco space-echo!

At least in TNG, the space-techno-mojo usually led to the characters learning some interesting truth about themselves or human nature. "Disaster" is a good example. But in Voyager, it's just a way of killing time until the credits roll.

Lotta wasted opportunities in Voyager.

Unfortunately, it's this same blandness which leads to Janeway being so ineffective as a captain. The character was initially billed as being closer to Kirk than to Picard or Sisko, but we didn't see much of that. All we saw her doing was letting Voyager get taken over completely at least twice while she's getting popped in the mouth and smacked down on the hard deck like a punk ass red shirted ensign. Hell's balls, even Picard beat the ass out of two punk Klingon assassins who jumped him. Sisko threw a beatin' on Q when he started talkin' all that cosmic smack. And Kirk would throw the flying double fisted dropkick boogaloo down on anyone who stepped wrong.

A Starfleet captain who can't drop mad fisticuffs on some heads when the shit is deep and some space bitches are trying to jack your ride? This is made even worse by the fact that, despite coming up in the Engineering department before she was a Command Officer, Janeway couldn't figure out how to set a photon torpedo with a goddamn egg timer, to keep them from getting stuck in the Delta Quadrant in the first place.

She was just never written as the character they wanted her to be.

Which brings us to Seven of Nine's assets, mentioned before. As much as i dig the Seven, it was obvious she was added to the cast to add some punch, some interest. It's sad they felt the only way to do that was with some hi-tech cheesecake stuffed into a skintight silver catsuit. On WWE, they called it Diva Search. But the same principle applies. And it was equally sad that after her introduction and until the final episode, Seven got the lion's share of the writers' attention. Her character was developed the most, often at the expense of other characters.

Of course, since I liked Seven, this was a good thing for me. But the actors on the show hated it. I remember reading an interview with Robert beltran where he was complaining about this.

I think the writers and producers became too complacent during this time. They did not recover until several episodes into the final season of Enterprise, and then, during that show's final episode, slid back into complacency.

"You must be proud, bold, pleasant, resolute,And now and then stab, as occasion serves."